Lemonade Happiness

This past weekend I spent most of my time packing up our rental and hand painting wall tiles. I’ll have to tell you about those tiles another time.

As I was packing stuff up, and showing our apartment to potential new residents, I realized we were leaving the fruit trees behind. Besides our neighbors, I’ll miss the trees in this yard the most. They have provided the best oranges I’ve ever had and certainly the best lemons. I’ve made an apple pie, fresh orange juice, and lemonade.

Yesterday, we enjoyed our first and only apricots from one of the trees. Look how cute they are.

Anyway, there are a ton of lemons on the tree right now so I figured we just had to make one last tub of lemonade! Emma and I went out picking lemons.

Just a quick cleaning and then I cut them in half. I am so in love with my juicer that fits right onto my Kitchen Aid mixer! Check out my action shot…

Don’t you just love lemons? I do, and I’m obsessed with limes too. I put them on everything. When we move to the ranch I’ve been seriously thinking about having a lemon and lime tree that I can grow in big pots so I can move them around in the winter, just so I can have the fruit!

I usually use 5 cups of water, to 2 cups of lemon juice and 1 cup of sugar. I like to heat the water and sugar because I can’t stand to have sugar piled up on the bottom of the glass. Heating it to a boil seems to dissolve the sugar better. Anyway, I tripled the mix yesterday and had to add a little more sugar and lemon juice at the end to get it just right. I should have used less water, for the tripling!

It turned out great and we were able to share it with our neighbors, who brought a ton of BBQ over to us earlier in the day.

My sad little glass! I have already packed all of my adorable straws and even all of the chalk so I couldn’t even write something clever on the glass. Oh well, it tasted great and we’re still enjoying it today.

Kelley,
I can’t believe your San Juan home has come to an end. It went too quick. Tell us what is next. And, how often are you coming back ?
I am also crazy in love with lemons. And the problem always was that I got too many at one time. So, I always juice them all up, Ang pour in ice cube trays for bags of lemon cubes forever. 🍋 They are still delicious!
Love,
Auntie Vickie

Thanks Auntie! I can’t believe how fast it’s gone by. I’ll keep you posted on visits and now you have a place to stay when you go to boats shows on Tahoe! I’ll take a lot of lemons with me to juice and freeze. What a great idea!